Pragmatic is a word you’ve probably heard before, especially in the context of choices or actions that are considered practical and reasonable. It’s often used in reference to political positions or actions, but it can also be applied to any situation that requires a pragmatic approach. The word pragmatic is actually quite old, originating in Middle English around 1400. The roots of the word are related to pragma (“practice,” “rationality”) and praegmon (“to be practical”). Pragmatism is a philosophical theory that describes the ways we approach problems in life. The goal of pragmatism is to avoid the swamps and dead ends that come from debating absolutes (for example, does freedom exist or not) by asking questions about how things actually work in real life. This practical, problem-oriented approach is the essence of pragmatism.
The concept of pragmatics is a broad one, with many different strands of research within the field. There’s formal and computational pragmatics; theoretical and experimental pragmatics; game-theoretic, clinical, and even neuropragmatics; intercultural and linguistic pragmatics; and historical pragmatics, to name just a few.
Regardless of the strand of pragmatics that you’re interested in, all forms of pragmatics share some common features. The most central feature is the idea that there’s a gap between the intended meaning of an utterance and its actual interpretation by hearers. This gap can be caused by a variety of factors, including but not limited to speaker-behavior, listener-behavior, and contextual constraints.
Another feature that’s common to all pragmatics is the idea of understanding and being understood. Understanding is crucial to all communication, whether it’s between two people or across cultures. However, the notion of understanding is highly contextual, and the pragmatic rules that govern understanding are unique to each culture. For example, directness valued in some Western cultures is likely to be seen as abrasive in Asian cultures, where indirectness and subtlety are prized.
In experimental pragmatics, scholars typically use a combination of methods to assess the pragmatics of an utterance. They present participants with a wide range of stimuli, and then they compute averages of the participants’ behavioral responses to those stimuli. This type of pragmatic research can be very challenging, however, because there are so many variables to take into account. For example, individual differences in how a person’s brain is wired can affect his or her pragmatic performance on any given task.
As you can see, there are a lot of factors that go into pragmatics, and the field is constantly evolving and expanding. There’s no doubt that it’s a fascinating area of study, and one that has a significant impact on the way we interact with the world around us. If you’re curious to learn more, I encourage you to explore the many different strands of pragmatics that are out there. You might be surprised at how much you can learn about language by studying its pragmatics.